The 2025 edition of H-E-B’s Quest for Texas Best competition is down to 10 finalists and one of them is based in McAllen. Sully Villareal’s Deli Spice Cooking Spices has made the cut among more than 370 products up for H-E-B’s review. An H-E-B press release states about Deli Spice, “Every blend is tested by families and perfected by a Mexican mom in Texas to help people cook authentic birria…
South Texas College Continuing Education is currently holding free Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Basic Life Support and first aid classes with certification from the American Heart Association. Registration is now open to anyone in the community including health care professionals, police officers and community members who seek training that can help save lives in emergency situations. The free CPR courses are funded by a grant from Texas Mutual, which has been providing…
McAllen International Airport is now offering Tap N’ Fly ticketless parking, a third TSA screening lane and the new MFE VIP Lounge. MFE is now the first commercial airport south of San Antonio to offer both a ticketless parking system and three TSA security screening lanes, reducing wait times and improving the security process for all passengers. “Investments in our infrastructure moves our city forward, which positions McAllen as a…
Looking over the turning basin from the Port of Brownsville’s Harbor Master’s Office, Maritime Business Administration major Samuel Hinojosa spent this summer preparing for his final semester at Texas A&M University – Galveston, as an intern gaining valuable hands-on experience in the maritime industry. Hinojosa was one of three college students selected to intern at the Port of Brownsville this summer as part of its ongoing workforce development efforts. Alongside…
McAllen native Will Collins has built a formidable retail and commercial real estate company whose developments span much of South Texas. From its headquarters in San Antonio, Merit Commercial Real Estate shows on its webpage dark blue diamonds pinned on a Texas map. Each pin represents a Merit development project with clusters of them in the Rio Grande Valley and the San Antonio-area market. Collins comes from a banking family.…
Princeton University student Wendy Kopp formulated the idea of Teach For America in 1989 for her undergraduate thesis. The first participants in the nascent TFA program began their lifelong pursuit of educational excellence in 1990. Teach for America Rio Grande Valley was founded the following year. The national organization and its affiliates around the country are non-profit institutions. They recruit and train recent college graduates and professionals to teach in…
The footprint of the Rio Grande Valley’s citrus industry has largely retreated to the northern reaches of Hidalgo County from what once was a regional reach of over 100,000 acres. The RGV citrus industry of today counts about 25,000 acres of grapefruits and oranges. The turning points for an industry that historically defined the region’s early agricultural history were the freezes of 1983 and 1989. The damage from those weather…
Israel Vega is a nurse practitioner who dabbles in renovating classic Chevys and is a founding member of a Rio Grande Valley-based semi-pro soccer team. Since January, you can add co-owner of a Los Fresnos coffee shop to his portfolio. PJ’s Coffee is a shop he co-owns with his business partner and fellow Los Fresnos native, Adam Abrego. They wanted to create a sense-of-community kind of place where people could gather…
Solis Mammography, the nation’s largest independent provider of specialized breast health services, is now operating out of Valley Regional Medical Center, expanding screening and diagnostic breast imaging services to Brownsville and the lower Rio Grande Valley region. Patients in the Brownsville and lower Rio Grande Valley communities may now experience the latest in innovative technology, including the integration of AI software with 3D mammography for greater accuracy and earlier-stage cancer detection.…
The City of McAllen held a ribbon cutting ceremony on July 16 for Camp McAllen, a first-of-its-kind public campground offering residents and visitors immersive outdoor experiences, right in the heart of the city. Located at 8701 N. 23rd Street, just north of Frontera Road, the 20-acre site includes fishing docks, kayak launches, an archery range, walking and biking trails, and group camping spaces. Mayor Javier Villalobos, city commissioners and city…